Thursday, March 29, 2012

Do you remember when today's "progressives" called themselves liberals? They don't today because the term "liberal" became too toxic, associated with all sorts of ills for which they were responsible. Thus the left rebranded. That is one word game the left follows, another is the art of "tenditious redefinition," to simply take a word that sums up an accusation against them, and turn it on its head. For example, does anyone actually believe that the People's Democratic Republic of North Korea is either democratic or a republic. At any rate, "tenditious redefinition" is what our left are doing today with the term "judicial activism."

"Judicial activism" has been used for years to refer to ignoring original intent and, equally, creating new law out of non-existent Constitutional cloth. Roe v. Wade (finding a right to abortion in the penumbras), Kelo v. New London (gutting the 5th Amenment),
, Boumediene v. Bush (writing a role for the Courts into decisions of national security), and Trop v. Dulles (8th Amendment "evolving standards of decency"), all constitute clear examples of judicial activism. The polar opposite of "judicial activism" is originalism, where the Courts act within the constraints of the original intent of the drafters of our Constitution and existing precedent. The best example of this is the Heller case on the 2nd Amendment.

And yet now, the left, with Obamacare looking like its going to be overturned, is prepping the battlefield by claiming that to find Obamacare unconstitutional would be an act of "judicial activism." This is insane.

Obamacare would fundamentally change our federal government from one of enumerated powers - that it has been since 1783 - to one of unfettered power. As I point out in the post below, it would give the federal government the right to require that everyone who participated in the Boston Tea Party buy East India Trading Company tea. That is the polar opposite of what our Founding Fathers created when they signed onto the Constitution. To approve of this would be the most far reaching act of judicial activism our nation has ever seen.

According to the intellectually challenged EJ Dionne (the guy really is dumber than dirt), "It fell to the court’s liberals — the so-called “judicial activists,” remember? — to remind their conservative brethren that legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches.legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches." Dionne would redefine "judicial activism" to be the mere striking down an act of Congress as unconstitutional, irrespective of whether it exceeds the bounds of the power of the legislature. And he is far from alone. Johnathan Chait in NY Magazine makes precisely the same argument, as does the NYT editorial board.

These arguments are not merely intellectually dishonest, they are insidious in their attempt to redefine words to suit their purposes. And while I disagree with every word Dahlia Lithwick writes at Slate, at least she brings a bit of intellectual honesty to the argument. Her argument is pragmatic, that the Court should uphold Obamacare because it makes the most sense in our modern era. Her complaint is an accurate one, that the conservative justices are looking back in time to define legislative power. She says they are looking back to 1804. She is only off by 21 years.

The House just held a vote on Obama's budget, the one that adds major new taxes and trillions in new debt. It failed, 414-0. Let's say that again. Obama's budget did not garner a single Democratic vote in the House, failing 414-0.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

It’s amazing the lengths of racebaiting that the Leftist Liberal News Media Industrial Complex will go to in order to re-elect their savior,Obama. They’re going so far as to call a Hispanic man “White Hispanic” in order to incite a race war! How tolerant and inclusive of them. Well, I thought I’d help them out and give them this easy to understand guide to classifying Hispanic skin colors! Enjoy gringos!

So will the Supreme Court uphold or strike down Obamacare in whole or in part? It's impossible to project, and I won't try. I will simply note that if they do uphold it, they will be expanding the power of the federal government to the point that it would have the power to force each and every person who participated in the Boston Tea Party to buy East India Trading Company tea. Somehow, I don't think that was within the intent of our Founders when they drafted our Constitution. Our nation will be changed fundamentally.

But all of that said, the Supreme Court arguments were wholly worthwhile if for nothing else than listening to Justice Scalia questioning the Obama administration advocate on why the Obamacare mandate is outside the Constitution and prior Supreme Court precedent. Do enjoy this.

Justice demands that the killing of Trevon Martin, precisely like any other killing, be fully investigated. Justice likewise demands that if the facts warrant, his killer, the "white Hispanic" (and registered Democrat) George Zimmerman, should be prosecuted, but, equally, that if the facts don't show Zimmerman's conduct to be culpable, that Zimmerman should not suffer any legal consequence. For all of the facts known to date, Sister Toldjah has an exceptional roll up.

But justice has taken a back seat as the race hustlers have come out in force, calling for George Zimmerman's blood - the facts, investigation and applicable law be damned. All of the problems of the black community are glossed over as the loudest of voices all claim that the biggest problem blacks suffer from is violent white racism. That is about as far from reality as one can get.

The New Black Panthers - the same group calling for the murder of "cracker babies" - put out a "wanted" poster and has now put a bounty out for Zimmerman's capture. Louis Farrakhan - whom you might remember as the man who motivated the Virginia sniper - has called for "retribution." Spike Lee retweeted Zimmerman's address - though he got it wrong - in a clear invitation to vigilante justice. Jesse Jackson, who recently commented that "“targeting, arresting, convicting blacks and ultimately killing us is big business” in America - has proclaimed that there will be "no peace" until Zimmerman is arrested. MSNBC's resident race hustler, Al Sharpton - the man largely responsible for the Crown Heights riots that ended in the murder of two men by blacks - has made the Martin case his cause celebre, likewise portraying this as a racial incident and calling for Zimmerman's immediate arrest. According to Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson, that intellectual heavyweight who worried that too many people on Guam might cause it to tip over, Martin was "executed for 'WWB' in a 'GC.' Walking While Black in a Gated Community." Johnson may be dumber than a tomato, but he knows the language of race hustling. He has been joined in his obscenities by many other of his fellow black Congressmen and women.

Are you at all surprised that there has not been a single word of criticism from the left - and nowhere near enough from the right - for these outrageous acts, at least several of which amount to a call for a lynching? On the contrary, the left embraces these scandalous acts, while the right is so used to them that the response is muted.

Now let's take a look at some of the other race based violence going on in America - most of which is going virtually unreported and unremarked.

Two weeks ago, two 16 year old blacks followed a 13 year old white boy they did not know while he was on his way home from school. At some point, they tossed gas in his face, then lit him on fire while saying "you get what you deserve, white boy." There was zero mention of it in the national media. Regardless, to commit this barbaric crime, what kind of hatred must these two blacks have been fed, and who fed it to them? It turns out that race hatred was being taught to blacks in their Kansas City public school which, as Robert Avrech describes, "teaches and encourages racial constructs that make Nazi Germany look positively multicultural." Do see his post for the whole stomach churning story.

Though the above described attack was particularly heinous, it is hardly an anomaly. Brutal black race violence is not unusual at all in many places. In Philadelphia, they are seeing "almost weekly racially motivated mob attacks on white people. The media censors all mention of the race and only prints tiny stories calling them “flash mobs.”' This type of black mob racially motivated violence has also appeared in other cities across the U.S. In San Francisco and Oakland, its black mob violence directed at Asians. These are blacks being fed a steady diet of hatred and victimization by the left, and then lashing out.

The above is anecdotal evidence. Let's review some of the statistics.

- "In 2005, there were more than 645,000 victims of cross-racial violent crimes between blacks and whites in the U.S. In 90% of those crimes, black offenders attacked white victims."

- "Black men are the leading cause of death among young blacks [male and female]”; “1 in 146 black males are at risk of violent death”; and though comprising only 13 percent of the U.S. population, 43 percent of all murder victims are black, compounded by the fact that 93 percent of them are killed by other blacks."

- "There were two and a half times as many white and Hispanic victims of black killers in 2009 as there were black victims of white and Hispanic killers, even though the black population is one-sixth that of whites and Hispanics combined. If Hispanics were removed from the category of “white” killers of blacks, the percentage of blacks killed by Anglo whites would plummet, since a significant percentage of what the FBI calls “white”-on-black killings represent gang warfare between Hispanic and black gangs."

- In "New York City, [b]lacks commit 80 percent of all shootings . . . — as reported by the victims of and witnesses to those shootings — though they are but 23 percent of the population; whites commit 1.4 percent of all shootings, though they are 35 percent of the population. Add Hispanic shootings to the black tally, and you account for 98 percent of all of the city’s gun violence."

So there are huge problems in the black community. But among those problems, violent racism directed at blacks is at or near the bottom of the list. And indeed, racism itself of any kind directed at blacks is so absent from our country today that the race hustlers have felt compelled to invent the ludicrous construct of "color blind racism." Yet no one would know that if they just listen to the rouge's gallery of race hustlers listed at the top of this post. All of them want to pretend that its 1950 and Bull Conor, that infamous southern Democrat, is using the dogs and the hoses on blacks. The left teach blacks to feel victimized by whites, to nurse and, indeed, be defined by hatred of whites, and to blame all their troubles on whites. Not a single one of these "black leaders" is doing a damn thing about the true problems of the black community. And of course, they are aided and abetted by the left as a whole. To the left, anything that supports the black victim narrative is acceptable, no matter how unmoored from reality, no matter how obscene and noxious.

Racism has no place in America. That holds equally true for reverse racism - it too is every bit as repugnant and likewise, has no place in America. Yet the left has created two standards in America. They have set a high bar for anyone not a left wing black, all of whom are held to rigid standards of political correctness, and no standards whatsoever for left wing blacks. The right has acquiesced in this for years. No more. Everyone in our country needs to start holding all the race hustlers and their leftist enablers to account.

The acts of the New Black Panthers are illegal and we should be demanding that they be investigated. (I know, fat chance with Eric Holder, but the demand should be made all the same.) The same with Spike Lee - who should also face civil action from the people actually living at the address he tweeted. Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam need to be denounced and treated just as were the KKK - whom they resemble in mirror image. Moreover, we should be demanding that Nation of Islam "prison ministry" should be shut down in every state. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton need to be challenged vociferously for their ridiculous claims about white racism and, equally, about just what have they done to advance the plight of blacks. It is no secret they have done far more for their bank accounts than their community. After that, they should be shunned and their appearances protested at every opportunity. They need to be treated like the vile race hustlers they are.

And just to ask, if the state concludes, as they well may, that Zimmerman acted legally, do you think that there will be violence from black mobs stirred up by these race hustlers? I think it is inevitable. And every one of these race hustlers need to be held to account for it. Update: Apparently, a "flash mob" of black high school students found not merely time to rally for Martin, but then also to raid a Walgreens. Because, you know, nothing says racial justice like ransacking and robbing a store. The race hustlers need to be billed.

Race hustling and reverse racism need to go the way racism itself in America. It is long past time we need to start disrupting the race narrative with actual facts. For the benefit of every single person in this nation, it is long past time that we start holding the black left to the same standards of conduct as everyone else. Is there any doubt that if Breitbart were alive, he would be leading the charge on this. He left us far too soon. It is left up to us.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Clearly Obama is indicating that he can give Russia more of what they want from us if only they don't make waves before the election. And by implication, these same Obama plans would be very problematic if they became public prior to the election. So what is it - missle defense? Most likely. It is one area where we have a huge advantage and about which the Russians have been screaming like stuck pigs. So is Obama going to sell out our ABM capabilities to the Russians if he gets a second term?

Two, we may not have thousands of nukes pointed at Russia today, but anyone who thinks of that nation's government as benign or friendly to the U.S. is naive beyond all measure. This is the same Russian government that has helped build Iran's nuclear program, is now supporting the Syrian government with troops, and has all but annexed a part of Georgia. So just where can Obama possibly see our interests and those of Russia intersecting?

And lastly, of course, what is it that Obama can be telling foreign leaders that he is holding back from the electorate in advance of an election?

Monday, March 26, 2012

Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant and then tries to silence good.

That has been the hallmark of our modern left. Do visit Redstate for the full story. I would note that, if you look at the Koran, you will find it divided into two periods that follow the same precise pattern.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Australia held its local elections in one of its six states today - Queensland. The left wing and deeply green Labor Party has ruled that state for all but two years since 1989. But today, the drubbing they took at the hands of the conservatives was the equivalent of a massacre. Going into today, Labor held a majority, 51 of the 89 seats in the Queensland Parliament. At the end of the day, they held on to only seven seats. That's two seats shy of the nine seats they needed to hold just to retain their status as a major party in Queensland. Wow.

No one is as happy about this as the bloggers down under at the great site Crusader Rabbit. Do pay them a visit and say your congrats. The good guys won this one.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

According to the Telegraph, "gangs of women in Zimbabwe have been picking up male travellers to have sexual intercourse and harvest their sperm, according to reports:"

Susan Dhliwayo claims she pulled her car over recently to pick up a group of male hitchhikers and they refused to get in, because they feared they were going to be raped.

"Now, men fear women. They said: 'we can't go with you because we don't trust you'," 19-year-old Miss Dhliwayo recounted.

Local media have reported victims of the highway prowlers being drugged, subdued at gun or knife point – even with a live snake in one case – given a sexual stimulant and forced into repeated sex before being dumped on the roadside.

That's not snow on the ground. It's spider silk. How many spiders does it take to completely encase the ground surrounding a house and an out building in a web? I don't know, and I am not going within 100 miles of that spot to count them.

The webs were made by spiders fleeing floodwaters in Australia. More pictures at The Atlantic.

Pope Benedict said on Friday that communism had failed in Cuba and offered the Church's help in creating a new economic model, drawing a reserved response from the Cuban government ahead of his visit to the island next week.

Speaking on the plane taking him from Rome for a six-day trip to Mexico and Cuba, the Roman Catholic leader told reporters: "Today it is evident that Marxist ideology in the way it was conceived no longer corresponds to reality." . . .

Now if he would only stop on our side of the pond and pass that message to Obama and the rest of our far lefties. At any rate, as to Cuba, Pope Benedict XVI was perhaps Pope John Paul II's closest confidant during the 1980's when the Papacy played a crucial role in the Polish revolution that threw off the yoke of the Soviet Union. Perhaps the Pope sees a similar role for the Church in Cuba.

The EU has voted to extend its targeting of Somali pirates to their land based beach support operations, in addition to extending their joint counter-piracy mission for at least a year. I am not aware of a single effective EU military operation, but this one just may be the first. Barking Moonbat has the whole story.

The push for "gay rights" suffered a significant setback yesterday in a very surprising venue. The European Court of Human Rights ruled again that gays do not have a "right" to marriage, nor, when in a civil union, the same rights as a heterosexual married couple. This from the Daily Mail:

Same-sex marriages are not a human right, European judges have ruled.

Their decision shreds the claim by ministers that gay marriage is a universal human right and that same-sex couples have a right to marry because their mutual commitment is just as strong as that of husbands and wives.

The ruling was made by judges of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg following a case involving a lesbian couple in a civil partnership who complained the French courts would not allow them to adopt a child as a couple. . . .

[T]he Strasbourg judges ruled that because the French couple were civil partners, they did not have the rights of married people, who in France have the sole right to adopt a child as a couple.

The judges added that couples who are not married do not enjoy the same status as those who are. They declared: ‘The European Convention on Human Rights does not require member states’ governments to grant same-sex couples access to marriage.’

In the 2010 case, Schalk and Kopf v. Autriche, the EUCHR first held that there was no European right to homosexual marriage. The reasoning of the Court stands in direct contrast to Perry v. Schwarzenegger, where an activist gay federal district Court judge overrode the will of 7 million Californians to write into our Constitution a new civil right to homosexual marriage. In the Schalk case, the EUCHR held that there was no textual right to homosexual marriage in the European Convention on Human Rights, and thus it was an issue of social policy to be left to the individual nations. That is precisely what should happen with the issue of gay marriage in the U.S.

It should also be noted that this presents an interesting conundrum for the activist wing of the Supreme Court. In Lawrence v. Summers, the Court, in holding unconstitutional state laws that outlaw homosexual sodomy, relied in part on EUCHR decisions holding likewise. The left wing Court members will have to do some legal gymnastics to if they want now to ignore the EUCHR decision on gay marriage when the issue finally makes it to the Supreme Court.

The issue of "gay marriage" is also of particular import today in the UK, where the "conservative" PM David Cameron plans to foist a right to gay marriage on the people of his nation, a very sizable portion of whom are deeply opposed. Cameron promised that the new mandate would allow Britain's churches to refuse to conduct homosexual marriage ceremonies, but the EUCHR also addressed that in the case yesterday:

The ruling also says that if gay couples are allowed to marry, any church that offers weddings will be guilty of discrimination if it declines to marry same-sex couples.

So we wait to see whether Cameron continues ahead with his plans to push gay marriage down the throat of the people of his nation regardless of this ruling. If he does, he needs to challenged for his position in the Tory party. In fact, he should have been challenged over his refusal to allow the people of the UK a referendum on EU membership after promising it during the election campaign. He is a spineless left-wing snake with about the same commitment to conservative values as Obama.

At any rate, until today, I thought that the lefties, particularly the Euro-leftes, had never run into a new claimed "right" that they wouldn't embrace, regardless of the plain language of their Constitution. Make that doubly true for "gay rights." But life is nothing if not surprising.

Friday, March 23, 2012

I have been an Expert Reviewer on every one of the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and I can tell you that there is not a scrap of evidence in any of them that human emissions of carbon dioxide have any harmful effect on the climate.

How have they got away with it?

Attempts to "simulate" their unreliable and manipulated past climate "data" have been failures, yet are claimed as successes, But even if the "data" were genuine and the simulation successful it does not prove anything. Correlation, however convincing is not evidence of causation. The only way you can demonstrate the success of any theory is successful prediction of future climate over the whole range it is intended to be used, to a satisfactory level of accuracy. This has already been done with Newton's Laws of motion and Darwin's theories of evolution. It has not been done with the "global warming" theory. There has been no successful attempt to predict any future climate event. They do not even pretend they can do it, as they only provide "projections" from their models, not "predictions": .

How have they persuaded us that they are able to predict future climate?

They operate a system called "attribution". This is a combination of "simulation" (correlation), and "assessment" by "experts". The "experts" are all paid to provide the models that they are assessing. These assessments are therefore an elaborate and comprehensive conflict of interest.

They apply a whole series of "likelihoods" to each "assessment" and apply a fake "statistical significance" which, unlike those normally applied to genuine science, have no background of actual experimental observations.

Dr. Gray's stinging criticism of the IPCC for their computer model antics goes hand in glove with similar criticism by IPCC Reviewer Alec Rawls and Dr. David Evans. AGW theory is on its last legs. With no global warming for the past 15 years, virtually the entire theory of AGW now rests on Kevin Trenberth's untested hypothisis - generated by a computer model of course - that all of the missing global surface warming has transferred to the ocean deeps.
AGW cannot be allowed to die a quiet death. There needs to be an accounting when all is said and done.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The left is at it again, blaming oil commodity traders for the rising price of gasoline while studiously ignoring their own refusal to allow greater production of domestic oil. If you believe them, supply of oil is not the issue, just those evil speculators.

Let's ask this, do you know what the spot price was for South Carolina Intermediate Water at the close of business on NASDQ today?

There isn't one of course. Water is not traded on NASDQ, yet it is far more important to us than oil. It is necessary to sustain life. We consume exponentially more water than we do oil or gas. But because supply of water is so abundant relative to demand, it is not traded as a commodity, it is not subject to the vicissitudes of speculation in a very tight market, the cost of water in SC does not rise or fall depending on wether Iran throws a temper tantrum, and water's cost per gallon is negligible.

The moral of the story is obvious - sufficiently increase supply relative to demand, and the cost of any commodity will fall. That is the immutable law of supply and demand.

Today, we are only drilling oil in fields estimated to provide us with 22 billion barrels of oil. But what if our government opened up to drilling fields containing ten times that amount, 220,000 billion barrels of oil starting tomorrow. That is certainly within the realm of reason. Our estimated total reserves according to Obama's Department of Energy, likely exceed 3.5 trillion barrels of oil. We could easily ramp up production to the point of eclipsing Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer. Indeed, we could dwarf all of OPEC. And when the daily supply of oil on the market increases markedly, what then happens to the price? Indeed, who would be willing to speculate on increasing oil prices in a saturated market with more than enough supply to meet the world's demand.

The "evil speculators" meme coming from the left is the same one the left used during the 2008 oil price explosion, when oil reached a record of $145 a barrel. By comparison, today's price is approximately $107 a barrel. The left used the meme as a red herring to cover their refusal to drill for our domestic oil. The left's 2008 complaints caused the Commodities Futures Trading Exchange and other international agencies to launch an investigation. The ultimate finding - the cause of the price spikes was not speculators, but rather that "the world economy had expanded at its fastest pace in decades, resulting in substantial increases in the demand for oil, while the oil production grew sluggishly, compounded by production shortfalls in oil-exporting countries." Supply and demand. Go figure.

The "evil speculator" meme is also a dangerous one. Commodity trading serves the purpose of insuring both producers and commercial purchasers that they will have a guaranteed contract at a set price for future production. Over regulate that and you interfere with the market - something that always comes with bad consequences. This is particularly problematic when one realizes that it is supply relative to demand that is by far the most important component of oil cost.

Update: Since writing this, I see the AP has written possibly the most deceptive piece I have ever seen. According to the AP:

MORE U.S. DRILLING DOESN'T DROP GAS PRICES

It's the political cure-all for high gas prices: Drill here, drill now. But more U.S. drilling has not changed how deeply the gas pump drills into your wallet, math and history show.

A statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production by The Associated Press shows no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.

If more domestic oil drilling worked as politicians say, you'd now be paying about $2 a gallon for gasoline. Instead, you're paying the highest prices ever for March.

Political rhetoric about the blame over gas prices and the power to change them — whether Republican claims now or Democrats' charges four years ago — is not supported by cold, hard figures. And that's especially true about oil drilling in the U.S. More oil production in the United States does not mean consistently lower prices at the pump. . . .

. . . American oil production is about 11 percent of the world's output, so even if the U.S. were to increase its oil production by 50 percent — that is more than drilling in the Arctic, increased public-lands and offshore drilling, and the Canadian pipeline would provide — it would at most cut gas prices by 10 percent.

What a steaming pile of bull excreta that is. As Just One Minute points out:

Oh, for heaven's sake - the quetion is, does additional US production result in lower prices than would have otherwise prevailed? If, just to seize an example, producers only ramp up US production in response to shortages and rising prices elsewhere, a simple statistical analysis such as done here will "prove" that more production is always associated with higher prices.

Actually, it goes beyond even that. U.S. production has been in decline during virtually all of the past 36 years, while world demand has been steadily rising, thus making it impossible for the AP statistical analysis to have any validity. (The following numbers are given in thousands of barrels per day.) According to U.S. Energy Information Administration figures for U.S. field oil production**:

- In 1970, we were pumping 9,637 barrels of oil per day. U.S. oil production since then has STEADILY DECREASED while world demand has STEADILY INCREASED.

- In 1980, the number of barrels per day produced by the U.S. had declined to 8,597.World demand in 1980 was 59,901.24 barrels per day.

- By 1990 U.S production had decreased to 7,355 barrels per day.
World demand had increased to 64,273.

- By 2000, U.S. production was down to 5,822.
World demand had increased to 76,963.

- In 2011, U.S. production was 5,673.
In 2011, world oil demand hit a new record of 87,400 barrels per day.

So when, over the past 36 years, has the U.S. increased its oil production so as to impact an ever increasing world demand, thus bringing down domestic gas prices? We are producing exponentially less oil today than we were in 1970, while world demand has exploded by nearly a third.

The AP article is a ludicrous agenda driven hit piece with no discernible basis in reality. THey have waterboarded statistics to tell a wholly false narrative. Indeed, even their basic premise is false. The AP compares U.S. oil production to U.S. gas prices, but that wholly mistakes the issue. There never will be a direct correlation between U.S. production and U.S. gas prices. The correlation that exists is between global production of oil - of which the U.S. has been an ever shrinking bit player - and global demand - exploding in India and China particularly over the past decade - that have been the main driver of prices. The plain truth is that we have the capability to expand oil production on a massive scale, sufficient to effect price. And I am sorry to all the lefties out there, including Obama and the AP, but they just can't repeal supply and demand.

**Note, the way the information at EIA at presented, I am unsure whether the "field oil" numbers also include our offshore oil production numbers. The offshore production numbers, in thousands of barrels of oil per day, stood relatively stable at 1,000 from 1980 to 1990, then jumped to approximately 2,000 barrels per day in 2000, where it has more or less remained since. Those numbers would cause a bit of an uptick in oil production during the period 1990 to 2000, but would still be exponentially lower than the relative increase in world demand during that same time frame. Thus it does not alter my criticism of the AP hit piece.

Although the warmies fought off total devastation from Climategate, at least some, including notably the MET and CRU, have gotten the message that they need to be practicing real science - not political science - if they value their future. You will recall that, in January, the MET and the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of beleaguered East Anglia Univ. released their latest temperature data showing that there had been no warming for the past 15 years. Now the MET and CRU have announced:

Given the importance of the CRUTEM land temperature analysis for monitoring climate change (e.g. Trenberth et al. 2007), our preference is that the underlying station data, and software to produce the gridded data, be made openly available. This will enhance transparency, and also allow more rapid identification of possible errors or improvements that might be necessary (see e.g. the earlier discussion of homogeneity adjustments in the SH). . . .

As a result of these efforts, we are able to make the station data for all the series in the CRUTEM4 network freely available, together with software to produce the gridded data (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/ and http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/).

Hallelujah. My biggest beef with the warmies has always been that their data, having never gone through the "scientific method," had not an ounce of trustworthiness. What MET and CRU are doing is how science in our modern era should be practiced. My hats off to them. This is a huge step forward for climate science. My faith in the MET / CRU data has taken a giant leap forward. I now await a similar act from NASA'a odious uber-warmie, Jim Hansen. I shall begin holding my breath in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

At Oh What Now, the blogger, a retired marine engineer, has reposted a brilliant "comment" that he left at the radical green site, DeSmog Blog. In the comment - an essay, really - Nick discusses man's history of innovation in response to climate change and then challenges the modern greenie agenda as highly regressive:

Green thinking - more harm than good?

When the climate took a turn for the worse during the so-called Younger Dryas period some 12,000 years ago, our ancestors didn’t don a hair shirt and hope for the best. They innovated. A sharp return to ice age like conditions helped precipitate the development of agriculture in the Levant, a hugely successful innovation that soon diffused to other settled regions. So if contemporary climate change is to be taken as seriously as many Greens urge, our response should also be innovation driven. Why then does much of our current Green thinking focus on environmentally and socially regressive ideas?

While the development of agriculture during the Neolithic revolution was to change the world for the better, the real awakening from millennia of Malthusian stagnation was the industrial revolution. Whether through the far-reaching ideas of the Scottish enlightenment or the innovations of James Watt, it was realised that the future could be radically different from the past.

For example, in the late 19th century the growing use of steam power enabled energy and labour costs to decouple for the first time in human history. Energy became cheap while prosperity soared, not through crass consumerism, but through badly needed economic growth that provided an escape from agrarian poverty. It is the surplus from that innovation driven growth that now enables the provision of public services such as health and education. Nurses nurse and teachers teach only because someone else is providing their Joules, Calories and other material needs.

While innovation has undeniably delivered immense improvements in the human condition, innovation is also the principal route through which human needs can gradually be decoupled from the environment. . . .

Do read it all. It is simply a superb essay that I recommend to everyone.

I would add two things. One, Nick does his analysis assuming that green agenda is predicated on protecting Gaia. I don't. It appears to me that the green agenda and the acts taken to further it are, in large measure, a vehicle for gaining political power with a mandate to control man's activities. When you add that as an additional rubric for analysis, I think many of the green's acts and positions make musch more sense.

Further, Nick notes that his comment on DeSmog blog only lasted two days before it was deleted. Lefties, particularly the more radical ones, are not willing to tolerate any opinion that conflicts with their dogma. They don't debate facts, they just want to impose their beliefs. Such fanatics are, in equal measure, insecure, totalitarian and dangerous.

Conservatives are put into awkward positions of critiquing liberal ideas on grounds that they are impractical, unworkable, or counterproductive. Yet rarely, at least outside the religious sphere, do they identify the progressive as often immoral. And the unfortunate result is that they have often ceded moral claims to supposedly dreamy, utopian, and well-meaning progressives, when in fact the latter increasingly have little moral ground to stand upon.

Having pondered that for a bit, its clear that VDS has articulated an insightful and important point. VDS goes into detail, explaining how radical environmentalism, multiculturalism, illegal immigration, and affirmative action make his point. Do read his entire article. This is a suggestion that all on the right should take to heart. It is decades beyond time for the right to stop ceding the moral high ground to those on the left who are merely posing atop it.

Carolyn Jones has written a column in the Texas Observer about her experience under the new Texas law requiring a sonogram prior to having an abortion. She clearly considers the law a part of the "war on women."

Ms. Jones decided to abort a pregnancy after she found that the child had birth defects that would have, she tells us, required "life time medical care" and left the child "in pain." Curiously, precisely what the child's condition was, Ms. Jones seemingly takes pains not to specify. Irrespective, Ms. Jones does have my sympathy for finding that her unborn child had birth defects.

What is utterly ludicrous and disgusting is Ms. Jones's melodramatic recounting of the "ordeal" of having to undergo a sonogram and see the life she held in her womb prior to having the abortion. This short, non-invasive procedure, designed to make apparent the moral implications of abortion, is, according to Ms. Jones, nothing less than "torment." Fortunately, her "ordeal" was somewhat ameliorated by the good people at Planned Parenthood, whom she describes with a varying list of positive adjectives, from 'compassionate' and 'warm' to 'sympathetic' and 'professional.'

When told by the Planned Parenthood staff that she would have to have the sonogram per Texas law prior to the abortion, Ms. Jones tells us that she replied:

“I don’t want to have to do this at all,” I told her. “I’m doing this to prevent my baby’s suffering. I don’t want another sonogram when I’ve already had two today. I don’t want to hear a description of the life I’m about to end. Please,” I said, “I can’t take any more pain.”

How much of a narcissistic, amoral if not immoral individual do you have to be to near hysterically center on 'your pain' and not the life that you are about to extinguish. But the extremes of melodrama were not done.

“I’m so sorry that I have to do this,” the doctor told us, “but if I don’t, I can lose my license.” Before he could even start to describe our baby, I began to sob until I could barely breathe. Somewhere, a nurse cranked up the volume on a radio, allowing the inane pronouncements of a DJ to dull the doctor’s voice. Still, despite the noise, I heard him. His unwelcome words echoed off sterile walls while I, trapped on a bed, my feet in stirrups, twisted away from his voice.

“Here I see a well-developed diaphragm and here I see four healthy chambers of the heart...”

I closed my eyes and waited for it to end, as one waits for the car to stop rolling at the end of a terrible accident. . . .

What it all boils down to is this - the far left, and most definitely Ms. Jones - do not want any moral considerations associated with abortion. This is part of the reason why the left is an implacable enemy of religion and any continuing role for Christian morality in the public square. They want an omnipotent government to be the sole moral arbiter, and abortion is one of the tools through which they are trying to accomplish that goal. And indeed, Ms. Jones goes so far as to cast her freedom from morality as a right. Ms. Jones does not believe that the state has any role in furthering the sanctity of life.

It is important to note that the Texas law, as currently interpreted, does not require a woman carrying a child with significant birth defects to undergo a sonogram prior to the decision to abort. The rule was so new at the time that Ms. Jones went for her abortion that Planned Parenthood went ahead with the sonogram out of an abundance of caution. But Ms. Jones makes absolutely clear that it is the sonogram for any woman seeking an abortion to which she objects. And as she says in conclusion to her screed:

[W]hat good is the view of someone who has never had to make your terrible choice? What good is a law that adds only pain and difficulty to perhaps the most painful and difficult decision a woman can make? Shouldn’t women have a right to protect themselves from strangers’ opinions on their most personal matters? Shouldn’t we have the right not to know?

What immoral arrogance. Countless people have been faced with pregnancies of children that they knew had birth defects. But Ms. Jones's point goes far beyond that, to every woman who is pregnant and considers abortion.

Abortion snuffs out a human life. Shouldn't the people of our nation, acting through the state, have the right to insure that the woman who makes the decision to abort at least understands the moral implications of that decision? Ms. Jones casts this as heinous. What is truly heinous is the belief of Ms. Jones and her ilk, who devalue human life and see in abortion no moral issue at all. A 10 minute sonogram under the Texas law is not part of a "war on women." It is Ms. Jones and her ilk who are in the midst of a war on religion and morality in the U.S. And that war goes beyond abortion. It is for the heart and soul of our nation. Pick your side.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.” The ruling came in response to a query from a Kuwaiti delegation over proposed legislation to prevent construction of churches in the emirate. The mufti based his decision on a story that on his deathbed, Muhammad declared, “There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula.” This passage has long been used to justify intolerance in the kingdom. Churches have always been banned in Saudi Arabia, and until recently Jews were not even allowed in the country. Those wishing to worship in the manner of their choosing must do so hidden away in private, and even then the morality police have been known to show up unexpectedly and halt proceedings.

This is not a small-time radical imam trying to stir up his followers with fiery hate speech. This was a considered, deliberate and specific ruling from one of the most important leaders in the Muslim world. It does not just create a religious obligation for those over whom the mufti has direct authority; it is also a signal to others in the Muslim world that destroying churches is not only permitted but mandatory.

The response to this outrage from the White House (and the MSM) has been utter silence. That is no surprise. Anyone who believes Obama is a practicing Christian (or a Muslim, for that matter) is deeply misguided. Obama is a secular leftie, and that makes him, like all on the left, an enemy of Christianity and Judaism. If you think I overstate, please see here. And it makes him a friend of Islam in as much as it too is an enemy of Christianity. But I think Obama goes beyond the natural leftie impulse in respect of Islam. As I wrote before:

[I]t seems apparent that [Obama's] time spent in Indonesia where he was living in a heavily Islamic environment has colored his views on Islam. He seems to have extrapolated from from what he observed of the benign form of Islam practiced in the Indonesia of his youth to the Islamic world as a whole. That is an incredibly naive error.
The Shafi'i school of Islam, practiced in Indonesia during Obama's stay there, is not the norm for the Islamic world. More and more the norm is Wahhabi-Salafi Islam, the far more militant, racist, misogynistic ideology at the heart of al Qaeda.

Do note that Wahhabi-Salafi is the state religion of Saudi Arabia and its Grand Mufti, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the would be destroyer of Churches.

At any rate, all of the above might explain Obama's unconscionable silence on the treatment of Christians in the Middle East. But that silence could have significant ramifications in the instant case. To continue from the Washington Times editorial:

The White House has placed international outreach to Muslims at the center of its foreign policy in an effort to promote the image of the United States as an Islam-friendly nation. This cannot come at the expense of standing up for the human rights and religious liberties of minority groups in the Middle East. The region is a crucial crossroads. Islamist radicals are leading the rising political tide against the authoritarian, secularist old order. They are testing the waters in their relationship with the outside world, looking for signals of how far they can go in imposing their radical vision of a Shariah-based theocracy. Ignoring provocative statements like the mufti’s sends a signal to these groups that they can engage in the same sort of bigotry and anti-Christian violence with no consequences.

Mr. Obama’s outreach campaign to the Muslim world has failed to generate the good will that he expected. In part, this was because he felt it was better to pander to prejudice than to command respect. When members of the Islamic establishment call for the religious equivalent of ethnic cleansing, the leader of the free world must respond or risk legitimizing the oppression that follows. The United States should not bow to the extremist dictates of the grand mufti, no matter how desperate the White House is for him to like us.

Somehow, I think that the only thing we will hear from Obama is continued silence. This is, after all, the man who recently signed us up through the UN for the Islamic push to silence criticism of Islam.

FALSE:“Do not tell me that we’re not drilling. We’re drilling all over this country. I guess there are a few spots where we’re not drilling. We’re not drilling in the National Mall. We’re not drilling at your house. I guess we could try to have, like, 200 oil rigs in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.” (March 15, 2012, Prince George’s Community College.)

TRUE: President Obama has blocked drilling in offshore areas totaling more than 10 times the size of Texas. He has stalled progress on an estimated one trillion barrels of oil in the American West, where the federal government owns the majority of the world’s oil shale. These off-limits supplies alone give the United States some of the largest oil reserves in the world. And no one proposes drilling in the Chesapeake Bay.

“WE’RE USING 20%, WE HAVE 2%”

FALSE:“America uses more than 20 percent of the world’s oil. If we drilled every square inch of this country — so we went to your house and we went to the National Mall and we put up those rigs everywhere — we’d still have only 2 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. Let’s say we miss something — maybe it’s 3 percent instead of 2. We’re using 20; we have 2.” (March 15, 2012, Prince George’s Community College.)

TRUE: The President derives his “2 percent” from America’s “proven reserves,” about 20 billion barrels of oil. Proven reserves are the “quantity of energy sources estimated with reasonable certainty, from the analysis of geologic and engineering data, to be recoverable from well-established or known reservoirs with the existing equipment and under the existing operating conditions.”

The U.S. was said to have 30 billion barrels of “proven reserves” in 1980. Yet from 1980 to 2008, we produced about 75 billion barrels of oil.
No one thinks the proven reserves numbers come anywhere close to capturing our oil resources–even the U.S. government. The Energy Department estimated in 2006 that there were about 400 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, including undiscovered resources and that does not even include oil shale. That’s 5 times the number President Obama is using. And oil shale is another 800 billion to 1 trillion barrels.
Total estimated resources exceed 1.4 trillion barrels of oil in the United States, and Goldman Sachs predicted last year that the U.S. has the potential to be the world’s largest oil-producing country by 2017. The number the President is using, about 20 billion barrels, is less than the current best estimate for the Bakken formation in North Dakota alone.

In addition, the President’s claim that “we use 20% of the world’s oil” is false and evasive. We consume 20% of the world’s oil production, not 20% of the world’s oil reserves as the President’s comparison suggests. The President is just cherry-picking numbers. The 2 and the 20 are not meaningfully related so the comparison makes no sense—it certainly doesn’t prove we’re consuming too much or that there is too little to go around.

OIL IS SOLD ON THE “WORLD MARKET”…THEREFORE PRESIDENT OBAMA’S POLICIES CAN’T INFLUENCE THE PRICE OF OIL

FALSE:“How much oil we produce here at home, because we only have 2 percent and we use 20, that’s not going to set the price of gas worldwide, or here in the United States. Oil is bought and sold on the world market.” (March 7, 2012, North Carolina)

HE EMPHASIZES THIS AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN:

We can’t just allow ourselves to be held hostage to the ups and downs of the world oil market. (February 23, 2012, Miami, FL)

“Gas prices and the world oil markets right now are putting a lot of pressure on families right now.” (March 15, 2012, Prince George’s Community College.)

“When prices spike on the world market, it’s like a tax, it’s like somebody is going into your pocket.” (March 15, 2012, Prince George’s Community College.)

TRUE: President Obama and his allies have repeatedly suggested his policies can’t be blamed for high gasoline prices because oil is “bought and sold on the world market” over which he has no control. But prices on the “world market” are determined primarily by supply and demand, and the President is blocking development of substantial oil supplies offshore and in the American West, which together are several times the known reserves of Saudi Arabia. No one has claimed the President can “set” the price of oil, but his choice to close these areas affect the price significantly.

He could reverse his policies on these federal lands with the stroke of a pen. There is nothing special about the “world market” that would prevent that large increase in supply from putting downward pressure on price.

The President’s own actions have betrayed the knowledge that even marginal production changes have a significant effect on oil prices. When his administration asked Saudi Arabia to increase its own oil production, its goal was to lower prices in the U.S., and when he tapped the Strategic Reserve during the Arab Spring in 2011, he did so for the same reason. His claims to be powerless in the “world market” are just a bad excuse for the results of his anti—American-energy policies.

“TAXPAYER GIVEAWAYS” TO OIL COMPANIES

FALSE:“What’s more, at a time when big oil companies are making more money than ever before, we’re still giving them $4 billion of your tax dollars in subsidies every year.” (President’s Weekly Address, March 17, 2012)

TRUE: The oil industry is not subsidized. It is subject to generic tax deductions that apply to all U.S. manufacturers. What the President proposes is specifically targeting oil companies for tax increases, not ending subsides that are given specifically to the oil industry.

Under this view, the “giveaway” is that we are not taxing oil companies for the same things we do not tax anyone else. But not taxing an activity isn’t a “subsidy” or a “taxpayer giveaway”—unless you consider the income you’re allowed to keep a “subsidy,” too.

In addition, the President wants to end rules that prevent American companies from being double-taxed on energy they produce outside the United States, which would only benefit foreign competitors at the expense of American businesses.

The industry that is highly subsidized and receives “corporate welfare” under the Obama administration is the “green” energy industry—companies like Solyndra. The vast majority of energy sector tax preferences have been for renewables or energy efficiency companies. As the Congressional Budget Office recently reported, “Between 2009 and 2012, DOE provided an estimated $4.0 billion in subsidies for about $25 billion in loans.”

If the President is genuinely concerned about high gas prices, raising taxes on oil producers will cause gasoline prices to increase and will hurt consumers—whether he thinks that’s “fair” or not.

“SOLAR AND WIND” ARE SOLUTIONS TO HIGH GAS PRICES

FALSE:If we’re going to take control of our energy future and can start avoiding these annual gas price spikes that happen every year … if we’re going to avoid being at the mercy of these world events, we’ve got to have a sustained, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy. Yes, oil and gas, but also wind and solar and nuclear and biofuels, and more. (February 23, 2012, Miami, FL)

TRUE: If 100% of American electricity today were generated by solar and wind technologies such as the President is pushing, it would have virtually no effect on the price of gasoline. Wind and solar are methods of generating electricity which we use to power our buildings. Gasoline is the fuel for our cars. We barely use oil at all to generate electricity, meaning that converting everything to wind and solar would do nothing to decrease the consumption of oil. The only circumstance under which the technologies President Obama mentions would be an answer to high gasoline prices is if wind and solar were economically competitive sources of electricity and we drove inexpensive electric cars with capacities comparable to conventional automobiles. But today that is a distant fantasy, not a solution.

The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency. The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

And to think that I used to bitterly complain that Bush and the Republicans were spending our wealth like drunken sailors. Obama and the spendthrifts of the left make them look frugal and sober.

Update: Heh. Over at Crooks & Liars, they claim that the CBS report is "BS" - without contesting the numbers. Moreover, they damn the CBS reporter who made this observation to working at . . . Fox, of course. Lol. It is an exercise in intellectual dishonesty that deserves to be read.

The left's war on energy in America has been ongoing wince the 70's. With Obama, the first truly far left President ruling our nation through the EPA, the Energy Dept. and the Dept. of the Interior, the far left's war on energy has gone into overdrive. Let's address the war on coal first, the effects of which are literally looming just around the bend. Coal accounts for nearly 50% of our electricity, but the Obama administration is just now putting in place new regulations that will begin driving coal from the marketplace. The costs of electricity will soon be ramping upwards, and the stability of our power grid will become suspect:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has dangerously underestimated the impact of its back-door mandates on affordable coal-based electricity generation. Instead of the 4.8 to 9.5 gigawatts(GW) of electric plant retirements predicted by EPA, 57 power plants with 25.1 GW of generating capacity have already gone on the chopping block due to U-MACT and CSAPR. That means more than 29,000 workers are losing their jobs, millions of consumers will be paying more for their electricity and the reliability of our electricity supply is being compromised.

U-MACT is the EPA's latest regulation on boilers. CSAPR is the EPA's recently launched Cross State Air Pollution Rule. Both are a backdoor attack on coal. Neither has or will ever be voted upon by Congress under our current wholly bastardized form of government. As I have said before, there should be No Regulation Without Representation.

As to the war on oil, Obama claims that drilling in the U.S. to increase supply will have no impact on gas prices. That is ludicrous. We are already feeling the impact of the war on oil through our gas prices - the average price of which under Obama is shown in the chart below:

Increase supply relative to demand and prices fall - that is the law of supply and demand. As to the most important component of the cost of a gallon of gas - roughly 45% - is the cost of a barrel of oil. According to Obama, we have "only 2%" of the world's oil and drilling would make no difference, we have to cut down on demand. The cognitive dissonance in that statement is mind numbing. Obama is invoking the law of supply and demand, but saying that only demand matters, not supply. Time to go to Krauthammer:

As to oil scarcity in the U.S., saying that we have only 2% of the world's oil is so deceptive that it amounts to a stunning lie of omission. What we are drilling today constitutes 2% of the world's oil. That is a minuscule fraction of what is actually in the ground in the U.S. and recoverable if Obama would allow it.

Do note that those figures come from the Dept. of Energy. As Hot Air points out, the above pyramid includes:

At least 86 billion barrels of oil in the Outer Continental Shelf yet to be discovered

About 24 billion barrels in shale deposits in the lower 48 states, according to EIA.

Up to 2 billion barrels of oil in shale deposits in Alaska’s North Slope

Up to 12 billion barrels in ANWR, according to the USGS.

As much as 19 billion barrels in the Utah tar sands

A stunning 1.4 trillion barrels of oil shale the massive Green River Formation in Wyoming

The reality is that the Obama administration is doing all it can to depress oil production. During the three years of the Obama administration, recovery of oil on federal lands has decreased by between 7% and 10% - and its been even worse for natural gas. Again to Krauthammer:

President Obama incessantly claims energy open-mindedness, insisting that his policy is “all of the above.” Except, of course, for drilling:

●in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (more than half the size of England, the drilling footprint being the size of Dulles International Airport);

●on federal lands in the Rockies (where leases are down 70 percent since Obama took office).

But the event that drove home the extent of Obama’s antipathy to nearby, abundant, available oil was his veto of the Keystone pipeline, after the most extensive environmental vetting of any pipeline in U.S. history. It gave the game away because the case for Keystone is so obvious and overwhelming. Vetoing it gratuitously prolongs our dependence on outside powers, kills thousands of shovel-ready jobs, forfeits a major strategic resource to China, damages relations with our closest ally, and sends billions of oil dollars to Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin and already obscenely wealthy sheiks.

Obama boasts that, on his watch, production is up and imports down. True, but truly deceptive. These increases have occurred in spite of his restrictive policies. They are the result of Clinton- and Bush-era permitting. This has been accompanied by a gold rush of natural gas production resulting from new fracking technology that has nothing at all to do with Obama.

“The American people aren’t stupid,” Obama said (Feb. 23), mocking “Drill, baby, drill.” The “only solution,” he averred in yet another major energy speech last week, is that “we start using less — that lowers the demand, prices come down.” Yet five paragraphs later he claimed that regardless of “how much oil we produce at home . . .that’s not going to set the price of gas worldwide.”

So: Decreasing U.S. demand will lower oil prices, but increasing U.S. supply will not? This is ridiculous. Either both do or neither does. Does Obama read his own speeches?

Obama says of drilling: “That’s not a plan.” Of course it’s a plan. We import nearly half of our oil, thereby exporting enormous amounts of U.S. wealth. Almost 60 percent of our trade deficit — $332 billion out of $560 billion — is shipped overseas to buy crude.

Drill here and you stanch the hemorrhage. You keep those dollars within the U.S. economy, repatriating not just wealth but jobs and denying them to foreign unfriendlies. Drilling is the single most important thing we can do to spur growth at home while strengthening our hand abroad.